What is a payment plan?

A payment plan is a billing structure you can attach to a recurring membership in order to automate regular customer payments.

Payment plans can only be used with recurring memberships and can not be added to Packs or Prepaid Plans

More info

It allows you to specify how much customers pay each cycle (e.g. monthly, every two‑weeks, or every X weeks/months), and to set optional features like minimum commitment periods, cancellation policies, and billing-day alignment.

This flexibility enables offering multiple payment options within the same membership (for example, £45/month with a £50 joining fee and no commitment vs. £30/month with a 12‑month commitment) or creating split payments for fixed-term offerings like a six‑week challenge (£75 every two weeks) that then auto‑cancels after the final payment.

A recurring membership can have one, or multiple payment plans (there is no limit to how many that can be added).

How to add a payment plan

To add a payment plan, go to your Memberships section, click on a Recurring Membership, and select "Add Payment Plan":

How to use payment plans & examples

Payment plans can be used in a variety of ways.

You can use payment plans to create a membership that bills customers every X weeks/months, or you might simply want to offer different monthly prices within the same membership, depending on the commitment length.

This can be achieved by creating multiple payment plans for a single membership.

Example 1

If you have a Monthly 3 sessions per week membership that offers two payment plans:

a) £45 per month with a £50 joining fee and no commitment.

b) £30 per month with a 12-month commitment.

Example 2

Payment plans also allow you to create split payment plans.

In some cases, you might want to give your customers the choice between paying for their membership upfront, or split payments over a period of time.

Let's say you're running a 6-week challenge and that customers can pay £225 upfront for, or 3 payments of £75.

The one-off payment of £150 can be set up as a prepaid plan membership, and the split payments can be taken via a recurring membership with a payment plan that bills £75 every 2 weeks and expires when the 6 weeks are up, like so:

⚠️Important: If you set up a membership with a payment plan which charges customers on a specific day of the month, customers payments will be prorated, but you can also add additional payment plans which allow customers to be charged the full payment amount on the day they purchase their membership.

Now lets take a closer look at each aspect of a payment plan so that you can better understand how these work:

Price

This is the set amount you'll charge customers per billing period.

Example: If you'll be charging your customers £300 over a period of 6 months, but you want to charge them in 6 installments, you can set the Price to £50, and charge them every month for 6 months.

Add Joining Fee

When setting up a Joining Fee in your membership you have the option to select between the following two options:

Charge a one-time fee for new or rejoining customers. Not charged to current members.
Charge a one-time fee for new customers only. Not charged to current members. Configure how customer are considered "new" in your customer settings customer settings.

The first option allows you to charge the joining fee to "New" and "Rejoining" customers, where New customers are customers who are considered "new" in your customer settings, along with customers who are not new, which means anyone purchasing this payment plan will need to pay the joining fee.

💡If a customer purchases the same membership multiple times, they will have to pay the joining fee for each purchase.

This helps discourage customers from purchasing multiple memberships within the same billing cycle, and encourage the proper use of memberships and ensure a smoother customer experience.

The second option will only apply joining fees to "New Customers", who are again defined in your customer settings section here.

💡Customers of businesses who have Stripe enabled will go through the new checkout where payment can be taken via Apple Pay or Google Pay.

This is only available when purchasing recurring memberships with joining fees, but will soon be made available for all purchase types.

Billing Period

This is the how often the customer will be charged, and the length of their billing cycle.

Example: If you wanted to charge customers £50 every 1st of the month you could set the billing period to be "1 Month", however, if you require your customers make payment to you once a year instead, you can set the billing period to "12 months" instead.

Billing Day

When purchasing a membership, the payment plan can be set to either one of these two options:

Same as when the plan was purchased

If the payment plan is set to "Same as when the plan was purchased", then when the customer purchases their membership, they will be charged for the full billing period, and then again on the same day of the month the following month.

Example: If a customer purchases a membership which charges £50/month on the 20th of July, they will be charged £50 at the point of purchase, and then £50 every 20th of the month.

On a set day of the month/week

If the payment plan is set to "On a set day of the month/week", then when setting the payment plan up you'll be asked to select the day of the month or week you'd like the customers to be charged.

Example: If a customer purchases a membership which charges £50/month every 1st of the month, and they purchase it on the 20th of July, then the customer would be charged the prorated amount which should be £19.35 (from the 20th of July to the 31st of July), and then they'll be charged £50 per month on the 1st of the month from that point on.

When it comes to selecting between monthly or weekly billing, you'll see that options change depending on how you set your Billing Period.

If you set your billing period to be per X Month, then you'll be able to select the day of the month you'd like the customer to be billed:

If you set your billing period to be per X Week, then you'll be able to select the day of the week you'd like the customer to be billed:

Commitment & Commitment Length

You can set a membership to have a minimum commitment length, which is the minimum amount of time the customer will be required to keep their membership active before they can cancel, and continue to make payment for their membership.

The minimum commitment period is set using "billing cycles".

Example: If you have a membership which charges customers £50 per month and has a commitment period of "6 billing cycles" then if they choose to cancel their membership manually, the cancellation date will automatically be set to the end of that commitment period, which is 6 billing cycles (6 months).

💡For more info on how customers can cancel their memberships please see here: How to cancel your monthly membership

For more information on how you can cancel a membership on behalf of your customer please see here: Cancelling a membership on behalf of your customer

After the commitment

You can select what happens to your customers membership once it has reached its commitment length. The available options are:

Expire the plan and do not bill again

If you set the membership to expire, and not bill again, then once the commitment length has been reached, the membership will expire, and the customer will no longer be able to use this in order to register for sessions.

Example: If the membership was set to charge £50 per month for 6 months, once they reach the end of their 6 month commitment length, the membership will expire an they will no longer be charged.

💡We recommend you avoid this option, and instead select to "continue to bill one cycle at a time", or "renew in full", in order to ensure no sudden drops in revenue.

Also, this way the customer can still book classes without having to manually purchase a new membership.

Continue period to period until cancelled

If you set their membership to continue period to period until cancelled, then the customer will continue to be billed on the same billing dates (e.g. every 1st of the month) and they will continue to be able to use their membership, until it is manually cancelled.

Example: If the membership was set to charge £50 per month for 6 months, once they reach the end of their 6 month commitment length, the membership will continue to charge the customer every month, without a commitment length, so they can cancel their membership when they choose.

Renew the commitment in full

Renewing the commitment in full will cause the membership to start over again, with the same commitment length.

Example: If the membership was set to charge £50 per month for 6 months, if they haven't cancelled their membership before they reach the end of their 6 month commitment length, the membership will automatically renew, a new commitment length will be applied to their membership, and they will continue to be charged £50 per month for the new commitment length.

Cancellation

If you haven't set a commitment length for your payment plan, you'll see the option to select how the membership can be cancelled instead and you'll be able to select from the following options:

Only allow cancellation from the business dashboard

If you set your membership to only allow cancellation from the business dashboard, then when a customer goes to cancel their membership on their customer site, they'll see a message indicating that they have to contact you in order to request their membership be cancelled, like so:

Allow customers to cancel with no notice

If you set your membership to allow customers to cancel with no notice, then when a customer goes to cancel their membership on their customer site, they'll see a "Cancel Membership" button:

;which once clicked on will display a pop-up asking them to confirm they'd like to cancel their membership, and informing them on the date their membership will remain active until (the end of their billing period.

💡We recommend you avoid this option, and instead select to implement a minimum cancellation notice in order to avoid sudden drops in revenue.

If you set a minimum notice period (we usually recommend 30 days) you'll have the opportunity to recover that loss in revenue before the customers membership ends.

Allow customers to cancel with a minimum notice period

If you set your membership to allow customers to cancel with a minimum notice period, then when a customer goes to cancel their membership on their customer site, they'll see a "Cancel Membership" button, and when clicked on it will display a pop-up notifying them that they will continue to be billed on the dates listed (depending on the cancellation notice required) and up until which date the membership will remain active.